Her long sequence of poems, she writes, “were
inspired by a close reading of the 1960 Oxford University Press edition of The
Tibetan Book of the Dead or The After-Death Experiences on the Bardo
Plane, according to Lama Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering compiled and
edited by W.Y. Evans-Wentz.”

XIV. A MOTHER IS
APPROACHED BY A SEER AT HER PLACE OF EMPLOYMENT

MY GAZE RESTS in her
oddly shaped breast bone, as if her heart were a bowl to fill

I like your green
dress

Thank you—I found it
in a trash can

She places one skull
bead and a carved teak wood pipe onto the counter to buy

Are you accustomed to
people telling you strange things?

Yes, of course

The air, just
becoming summer, clings to us like change, like a lover possessed

There is a dead man
following you and he is very eager for your baby to be born

He is a young man,
which is unique. Maybe early thirties. Most of the people who talk to me are
very old. But this man is young. He is happy for you. He thinks the baby will
be a girl.

She asks whether or
not we sell small dark feathers individually—the type that dangle from our
magenta leather dream catchers made in China

I read a lengthy prose-poem work, titled
“Texture: Louisiana,” the result of an American trip with Stephen Brockwell,
February 22-25, 2012. During that time, we were in and around New Orleans and
Lafayette, Louisiana, in part for a reading we did together at the University
of Louisiana at Lafayette on February 24, 2012, organized and hosted by poet
Marthe Reed. This piece is dedicated to both Brockwell and Reed, with many
thanks, and gratitude to Camille Martin and Megan Burns for generous feedback.
The poem is part of a larger manuscript-in-progress, titled “How the alphabet
was made,” a work constructed out of a small selection of sections, each
working different aspects of the prose and lyric sentence.

I’ve been interested more over the past couple
of years in the prose poem, finally setting some attention aside about eighteen
months ago to begin a proper exploration of the form, as author, reader and
researcher. The American prose poem has some interesting directions, many of
which I don’t see in the Canadian form, which appears to have an entirely
different history, one I am slowly attempting to map out. I suspect much of the
Canadian form comes more from French sources, both European and Canadian, than
the American, thusly accounting for the increased lyric abstract quality our
versions have, as opposed to the Russell Edson short story-esqe narratives of
the American. But who can say? I am still working the archaeology of the
Canadian form.

Arrive in New Orleans. They hose down streets
and other surfaces, the clear. The following morning, everyone repaints. The
hotel lobby, bars along Bourbon Street.

The grease from poles, to keep the crowds from
climbing. Straddled, this long-distance horse.

In a second hand bookstore, a poetry collection
by Norma Cole, inscribed to Andrei Codrescu. Apparently he had too many books.

Confess our sins. The riverboat wash.

~

In 1821, Jean Mouton bestowed Vermilionville. A designate,
along Vermilion River. Renamed for war hero General Gilbert du Motier, marquis
de Lafayette. A Frenchman, aiding the American Army during the American
Revolution.

A bastion of French, both language, culture. Cajon, Creole,
Acadian.

I am translucent skin.

The Battle of Vermilion Bayou, April 17, 1863. Third in a
series running between Union Major General Nathaniel Prentice Banks and
Confederate Major General Richard Taylor. What had we to say.

Am a tourist through these pages. I have no right.

Birds could never fly this high. Capital to capital.

Drop down in New Orleans. We flood, we persevere. We drown.

Already scattered notes have formed for an
accidental follow-up piece, “The Fall of New Orleans,” subtitled “[some field
notes],” extending the “How the alphabet was made,” manuscript.